Leadership

Susan M Barber Coaching & Consulting, LLC > Blog > Leadership

Authenticity in Leadership: Why Being True to Yourself Matters

Are you being an authentic leader? When you are leading from an authentic place, people will naturally gravitate to you. They want to work with you or work for you and be on your team. They trust you and see that you are genuine. This type of leadership translates to sharing information with each other at a deeper level.  Finding ways to connect with each other beyond a superficial level brings a team closer together and increases their performance to phenomenally higher rates. They…
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Managerial Alignment Makes All The Difference For Your Success

I have had several conversations this week on the importance of aligning with managers and stakeholders. It seems like common sense, but in the day to day of getting stuff done, it is something that may be forgotten. When I ask them about it, they usually think that their manager “probably” knows what they are doing, but they aren’t sure. It is important to always consider whether you have done it or need to do it. This is a type…
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Do You Have a Strong Leadership Foundation?

Leadership is a journey that requires a strong foundation to be successful. A leader who starts out with this type of strong foundation has a clear sense of purpose, values, and principles that guide their decisions and actions. This foundation enables them to stay focused, make tough decisions, and lead with integrity. Building this type of foundation wasn’t something I realized that I needed to do when I first became a leader of people and managed large project teams. To…
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Answer These 3 Questions to Help You Fast Track Your Visibility

This week I have been working with emerging leaders to build out their visibility action plans. Although they understand what visibility is now and why it is important, it can be hard for them to come up with the best actions that will help them make a bigger impact. Fear of failure, limiting beliefs, impostor syndrome and self-doubt gets in the way and holds them back. My role as their coach is to ask them questions to help them make…
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How to Build Self-Trust as a Leader

I was just reading an article from the co-founder of Netflix, Marc Randolph, about the 25 year anniversary of the company. He shared that “they simply believed that there “had to be a better way” to rent movies but along the way, we ended up not just changing the way the world consumes content, but how that content is created.” He also mentioned that every single person told him in the beginning that what he wanted to create with Netflix “would never…
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The Benefits and Impacts of Having Senior Leader Conversations

In the article, How to Have Meaningful Discussions with Leaders Above You, I shared what to do to prepare to have a great conversation with a senior leader and the importance of doing it well. Today is about what the benefits can be for you when you have these types of conversations.  Gain insights: Senior leaders have extensive experience and knowledge in their industry and organization, so talking to them can give you valuable insights about the industry, the company, and…
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How to Have Meaningful Discussions with Leaders Above You

I met with a client the other day who wanted to meet with a VP in her organization. However, in the next breath, she said, “but I can’t meet with him and have a conversation, I wouldn’t know what to say.” This is a common response from clients who are meeting with someone at a higher level than they are or it is the first time that they are having a conversation together. It is understandable to feel that way…
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What Can Coaching Do for a Leader?

I saw this article from Lolly Daskal, author, and executive coach, called How Can an Executive Coach Make You a Great Leader? It reminded me that there are so many benefits for a leader who has a coach. I wanted to share some of my experience of having a coach and ideas for you to consider should you decide you might want to hire a coach.  The Beginning of My Coaching Experience I remember when I hired my first coach in 2012….
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What is Impostor Syndrome?

Are you familiar with the term impostor syndrome and what it means? Do you know how to recognize it in yourself or in others? The term impostor syndrome was first identified in 1978 by Dr. Pauline Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes, whose research determined that this challenge impacts overachieving women who try to fit in and be perfect. The high achieving women attributed their success to mistakes, luck, or because someone hadn’t yet figured out that they didn’t belong where…
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It’s Time to Share Your Story!

What are the top experiences that you have had in your career? Think of some project or team that you were a part of that made a huge impact on you. That experience helped you gain knowledge, learn a lesson, grow as a leader, bond as a team, or perhaps you made the impossible, possible. So are you going to keep that all to yourself or are you going to share what you learned?  Every person that I work with…
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